


Lingering

by Kiaryn_Ledgem



Category: Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
Genre: Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Dynamics, Princes & Princesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23088148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiaryn_Ledgem/pseuds/Kiaryn_Ledgem
Summary: Princess Peach recalls and reflects upon her time in Rogueport after weeks of recurring nightmares and flashbacks.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Lingering

Violet flame flickers to life. A coffin creaks open, releasing a deathly fog unto the earth. A voice commands, soft as the wind, chilling to the bone.

“Where is the Vessel?”

Words muffled by static, mechanical in nature, reply;

“It is here! The girl who lies before you!”

“Yesssss… A fine vessel…. Now…”

Rousing back to consciousness, I struggle to pull myself upright. It’s too late.

The vessel feels a presence fall around her, the gaseous shadow consumes her form within clouds of lavender and seeps into her flesh.

The feeling is not entirely unpleasant.

*GASP*

The princess wakes from the recurring nightmare in a cold sweat. Panting, she sits herself up and surveys the dim contours of her royal bedroom. Naught is out of place. She sighs, falling back beneath the covers.

Three weeks its been since the events in Rogueport concluded, 21 days since Mario vanquished the entity known as the Shadow Queen has, supposedly, been destroyed for good. During the encounter, Peach had been possessed and a long arduous battle occurred to knock the thing out of her body.

And each night onward, the events have recurred. Over. And over again.

The princess tosses and turns, beyond fear and into frustration. _Why_? Why was this the event that finally broke her? If being kidnapped by a dragon didn’t cause PTSD, why this? Of course, it’s obvious, and these thoughts have replayed in her mind almost as many times as the nightmares; The dragon’s antics are little more than formality by this point; the kingdoms have had a peace treaty for decades and even that first time she was treated with dignity and respect, much as the rumours might say otherwise. Politics are strange in these lands.

But Rogueport was different. Her captivity on the moon, inadvertently seducing an A.I., merging with the shadow queen… It was traumatic.

_But you enjoyed it_.

“No!” Peach shouts to the aether, then immediately covers her mouth. Hopefully Toadsworth didn’t hear that. He means well, but his attempts to comfort her have been insufferable since returning to the Mushroom kingdom. Always coddling, always worrying. She supposes he might have the right of it, after being so brash in crime-ridden city with naught but a nagging old man and youthful confidence. If they hadn’t caught her by surprise, by the stars she would have…

But she didn’t.

She rolls over again and turns her eyes to the window. It’s overcast. The people will complain again. Especially the flowers. So many decided to put roots down in toad town recently. It’s bad enough when the toads can’t get their ‘wishes’ granted when the stars are concealed, the plants literally depend upon it for survival! Ugh. On top of that the fungi faction’s been protesting while the princess was missing for months. Too much leisure time out of the kingdom, they shout. The previous princess wouldn’t leave! Wouldn’t ally with koopas! Stars they are so infuriating. All her life, before her parents passed, they warned it would be difficult. Why did the stork bring her as a human? Just because her dad was? If she were a toad like the former princess, like her mom…

Peach screams into her pillow to drown out her thoughts. She’s just spiraling into despair at this point and that won’t help anyone. Sitting back upright in her bed, she decides a brief walk and some warm milk will help get back to sleep. Tomorrow’s a long day, after all.

_It doesn’t have to be this way_

The princess freezes, one leg already out of bed. Her eyes dart around the room.

Nothing.

It’s just her imagination. She puts slips on her slippers and-

_We could be so much more_

“I swear, if there is a boo pranking my room so help me I will have Luigi on your tail faster than you can blow a raspberry”

Silence.

“That’s what I thought, now-”

_You can’t deny these feelings forever_

Peach rushes to the door to flick the lights on and meticulously examines every object in her room for the mischievous incorporeal entity responsible. No such being can be found, which is probably for the best. No boo has dared try to prank her since childhood. The boo alliance was actually one of her most applauded accomplishments in her first year as Princess. Of course, for some, being on such friendly terms with the species common mistaken as spirits of the dead did raise the question of _why_.

_Because we’re special_

The princess stumbles backwards, tripping on her night gown and landing on her rump.

“I need another vacation”

_What you need is me_

Peach blinks and stares at the source of her madness.

Her shadow continues.

_Together we could rule effortlessly_

She kicks away until her back is against the wall, but as she moves under and past the ceiling lamp, the light’s source shifts her shadow’s position closer and closer until it is entirely beneath her.

_It would be so much easier if we worked together_

Peach bolts up towards the door, but as she reaches for the handle, she notices her sleeves have changed from their pastel pink to a deep purple.

“Aah!”

She pulls her arm back, tucking her hands close to her chest and turns to a mirror. Her reflection looks back with a devilish smile as the entire gown changes hues.

“Y-you’re dead! Vanquished!”

_And yet, here we are_

Nope! Nope nope nope! This isn’t happening! Not again!

Peach closes her eyes, clasps her hands together in prayer, and focuses on her breathing. In, and out. None of this is real. In…

And out…

When she opens her eyes, her reflection is her own; pretty and pink and pale as a sheet.

“Perhaps I should speak with Toadsworth, this may be more than a little crazy haha!”

After one more quick and uneventful check of her room, peach fetches some milk, gulps it down, and slips back into bed refreshed.

Yet still insomniac.

What was it Mario was always on about? Mindfulness? He always talked about how effective it was at getting him through his nonsense adventures. Maybe she could try it now, because the memories start flooding back the moment she gets comfortable.

A feeling not entirely unpleasant. The shadow queen’s embrace was… comforting. Like something long missing finally returning to its rightful place.

On the trip home, Mario spoke at large about his adventures, about what he learned. A lot of it was hard to understand of course, with his thick accent and wild gesturing, but what they concluded was that the shadow queen was an ancient demon from one thousand years past, sealed away by four heroes by the crystal stars, tools of her own creation, for ravaging the continent and ruling it with an iron fist. The ruins beneath Rogueport support the theory, as did the four spirits who aided Mario on his adventure, so we left it at that. Another ancient evil defeated.

When the nightmares became ceaseless, however, peach had done more research into the demon. While an ocean away, surely the records would include _some_ mention of an ancient demon or the sophisticated biotechnology she employed, but there was naught. Not in the mushroom kingdom nor the Koopa kingdom. No word yet from the beans either, though she’s yet to check their records for herself lest she risk the ire of her people for leaving yet again.

But she’s desperate for something, anything about the Shadow Queen.

Because it felt so _right_ wielding all that power.

Maybe not quite herself, peach constantly reminds herself. She was not _herself_. It was the evil, filling her mind with millennia of memories that now remain only as scraps of a fleeting dream. Making her move, making her attack Mario.

_We weren’t fully acclimated to each other_

Would she have embraced that power, had they remained fused for longer? Or would ‘peach’ simply cease to be.If Mario hadn’t refused to serve…

_Such a good, obedient pet…_

“observe the thoughts, and let them pass. Simply observe, then watch them drift away” Peach thinks to herself.

The thoughts continue.

She remembers, clear as day, what she felt. What she wanted Mario to say, to follow her into a new world of possibilities. But he didn’t.

And she got so angry.

But it wasn’t her, right? She’s the pure maiden, for whom the shadow queen needed to possess. It was all the evil thoughts!

But what _is_ purity. Did she really fit the bill? Princess is just a title, representative of the monarchy after the titles “Queen” was decreed as not pure enough. As a child Peach had been quite the brat; the boos stopped pranking her because _she_ pranked _them_. The Bane of grubville, she was. She’s done her fair share of fighting too, even landing the finishing blow on Smithy years ago.

She enjoyed that adventure, the fighting, a little _too_ much she thought.

So what made her so special?

No whisper of madness this time. The mindfulness is working.

Good.

She watches more thoughts go by.

The fight replays in her head. How _amusing_ it was for Mario to resist, to finally get a chance to fight him. For real, not just a friendly sports rivalry. But then, he was winning. Of course he was, he always wins. That’s when it felt wrong. Instead the welcome return of a long lost loved one, it was a sharpness eating away at her.

When the shadow queen had killing intent, when their minds were no longer in synch. The ‘demon’ had stopped trying to merge and merely used peach as an anchor for her soul.

Peach curls up in the sheets, clutching her head. This was the worst part. Every time she thought about it, it hurt. There was a flash of light, and she called out to the stars. They answered back, as they always do, and just as it had then, the pain recedes now. Whisked away into a memory within a memory, on the shores of an ancient Rogueport bearing a name lost to time. A young woman dressed in violet, crying, pleads to the stars from a tower filled with arcane technology. But when the answer the call, she chokes back the tears and unleashes a spell, petrifying their forms in crystal. The stars console her with their final breath. She embraces them and wipes her eyes, mouthing ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’.

A tall figure, shadowy and cruel, approaches encloses her in a looming shadow. The girl lets go of the stars, grits her teeth, and unleashes her newfound power upon the cruel monarch. The light of the stars magnifies the girl’s shadow, and in a single blow the figure falls. The landscape fades to the darkness of the palace, Four more shadows appear and steal the crystalline stars from the same girl, ageless yet still battered by time.

Within this memory, past peach sees an opportunity and wrangles back control of her body, if only for a moment, to glimpse what has become of the fight. Mario and his team are near death, the Shadow Queen, now monstrous, is stunned by forced recollection by the crystal stars. She steals all she can and syphons it back out to her friends, “ _mario… the last of my power. I believe in you”_

And the rest plays of the memory plays out as always, with the shadow queen snapping out of her vision and consuming peach entirely. However long the rest of the battle took, it was but an instant before the princess woke up with the demon dead.

Yet still it haunts her. She forces a deep breath and relaxes. The rest of her thoughts go by quickly; a hastily thought speech was given to Mario’s partners and grabbing Toadsworth she left Rogueport immediately, vowing to be a proper princess and return to her duties.

And she did. Here she is _now_ trying exactly that. To fight the creeping whispers and address the kingdom and its citizens needs as best she can. She even started taking Toadsworth’s suggestions a was devising a plan to try and appease those archaic minded fungs…

_But that isn’t you. It isn’t us._

“Oh stars damnit you’re still here? Go away already I need to sleep”

_The power you wield cannot be silenced. We linger together, forever…_

Peach opens her eyes to dawn’s gentle brightness and the chirping of birds outside her window.


End file.
